‘My voice proclaims
How exquisitely the individual Mind
(And the progressive powers perhaps no less
Of the whole species) to the external World
Is fitted:—and how exquisitely, too,
Theme this but little heard of among Men,
The external World is fitted to the Mind . . .’

William Wordsworth, Prospectus to ‘The Recluse’ 1814

The stylus is one of the simplest and most economical instruments of scientific practice. Apparently unsophisticated though ubiquitous, it plays a constitutive role in the production of knowledge. In the context of scientific research, both drawing and writing concretize cognitive processes and in this way open up an interaction between perception and reflection, between the securing of phenomena and the formation of theses.

Many objects and phenomena become available and comprehensible only through drawn and written records. Moreover, the activity of writing and drawing constitutes one of the most critical steps in scientific research: the step from (potentially) ambiguous data to stable facts.

In a deviation returning some level of uncertainty, my own process of drawing creates alternative systems of reference, networks of carefully selected images forced in to association with one another which become codes imbued with special hieroglyphic aura. My works often make allusions both to the human visual system and also to systems of evolution, a poetics of vision and division.

The Central Nervous System has evolved to decipher and reconstruct the sensory World in which it exists and is very much part of, as Wordsworth proclaims, brain builds World, but equally the World has built the brain.

The highly symbolic imagery also relates to the Hermetic visual languages of European Medieval and Renaissance Emblem Books, alchemy and mysticism.

Michael Maier, an important alchemical illustrator, described his work as a mixture of ‘Aphrodites and Hermes’, as a Hermaphrodite with both a sensual stimulus and intellectual appeal, attempting ‘ to reach the intellect via the senses’.

Michael Whittle, 2007

Born in 1976, Northumberland, UK
Lives / works in Kyoto, Japan

Education
Currently Doctoral candidate at the Kyoto City University of the Arts, Japan
2010 – 2012: Monbukagakusho Research Scholar at Kyoto City University of the Arts, Japan
2005: MA, Sculpture,Royal College of Art, London, UK
2002: BA, Fine Art, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art / Konstfach University, Sweden
1998: BSc, Biomedicine, Bradford University, UK